ducation and Work Without a Safety Net

Essays and comments on how higher

education, employers and policy makers can do
more to help students from underserved
backgrounds succeed.
By 

IHE Staff
 

September 15, 2020

 

Last month Inside Higher Ed wrote about how the pandemic and recession
were impacting the education and work of eight students from underserved
backgrounds. We followed up later with a virtual event featuring three of the
students we profiled.
This collection of essays includes commentary from experts on how higher
education and policy makers could better serve students who face similar
obstacles on their paths to a well-paying job and satisfying careers. It also
features an essay by one of the students we profiled, Joshua Christie, and
comments from readers.
-- IHE Staff
Intentionally Serving Latino and other Post-Traditional Students

Deborah Santiago & Beth Doyle

Beyond the “Plexiglass Promise”: Championing Real Change

Jo Alice Blondin
A Fair Shot at Economic Success and Stability

Amy Ellen Duke-Benfield

The Road to the American Dream: Finding Purpose in the Detours

Joshua Christie

Reader Comments

IHE Readers

Intentionally Serving Latino and Other Post-Traditional Students

By Deborah Santiago and Beth Doyle
As leaders in nonprofit organizations focused on “post-traditional students,”
specifically Latino and adult students, we saw familiar themes in “Personal
Stories From the Pandemic.” While the traditional student profile represents
less than 20 percent of students, too often it is the dominant profile when
discussing higher education. In comparison, the post-traditional student is the
majority and more likely to enroll in a two-year college, delay enrollment, be
older, need academic support, work 30 hours or more while enrolled, live off
campus, be Latino or another student of color, serve as caretaker for children
or other family members, be very worried about debt (that influences college
plans) and struggle with having the time and finances to complete a degree.
The health pandemic has revealed more publicly the structural and systemic
inequities we knew existed disproportionately for post-traditional students, like
those in the stories shared. Excelencia and the Council for Adult and
Experiential Learning have been working together on a project designed to
address some of these inequities as key opportunities for institutional action.
Here’s what we know: lower completion rates among Latino students, part-
time students and adult students are not caused by a deficit in the students.
These lower rates are often due to a lack of intentionality in serving Latino
students, especially adult Latino students. A college that knows whom they
serve (the strengths and needs of their students) is more likely to adapt its
efforts to serve these students well and fulfill the social contract an institution
makes when it enrolls a student.
The Latino Adult Student Success (LASS) Academy project provides tools for
institutions to examine closely how they are serving their adult Latino
students. It also offers support in implementing new policies and practices to
improve enrollment, persistence and completion. We have identified four
areas in particular that institutions are transforming to more intentionally serve
their Latino adult students among the 15 institutions we are working with.
 Financial support: In our project, one community college hit hard by
the pandemic began doing intentional outreach to their Latino adult
students, and upon learning of the financial need, decided to offer
microgrants for students to use as emergency funds to cover expenses
beyond tuition. They believe this helped retain many more students.
2. Student coaching: Several institutions in LASS identified the need to
provide coaching through the enrollment and advising process and
throughout a student’s educational pathway to improve degree completion.
They are training enrollment staff and advisers to provide student-centered,
adult-friendly, culturally responsive and holistic coaching.
 Onboarding events: A community college in LASS decided to build
connections based on students’ identified profiles. They staffed their
onboarding events with their colleagues from financial aid, counseling,
technology support and student associations. This allowed staff members
who were welcoming the students to offer them holistic support and provide
a warm handoff to the department that could help solve their problem.
 Shifting from the traditional focus of the college: One of the greatest
challenges of serving post-traditional students is shifting the mind-set of an
institution that has always served traditional students. One of the public
four-year colleges in LASS is conducting outreach and creating cohorts of
adult students who have stopped out and is empowering staff to address
 barriers with more culturally responsive problem solving to increase
success.
When a student enrolls in college, they have established a social contract with
the college. Both have a role in helping the student reach their educational
goals. Knowing the strengths and needs of the students the college enrolls
and providing services to support their educational progression is the “secret
sauce” to degree completion.
Deborah Santiago is co-founder and chief executive officer of Excelencia in
Education. Beth Doyle is vice president for partner success at the Council for
Adult and Experiential Learning.

Beyond the “Plexiglas Promise”: Championing Real Change

By Jo Alice Blondin
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence -- it is to act
with yesterday’s logic.” -- Peter Drucker
Our students have faced enormous challenges in the last seven months -- a
combination of the COVID pandemic, racial injustice, a mental health and
addiction crisis as a result of isolation and despair -- resulting in a collective
trauma that higher education must face. Our students, faculty, staff and
boards have all been shaped by these experiences in a short time, and to plan
for a return to “normal” at some undetermined time in the future is to neglect
the new ways that higher education must serve students now and in the
future.
We must move beyond the “Plexiglas Promise” -- an invitation and appeal by
college leaders to return to a campus that is fundamentally unchanged in its
approach to learning and social interaction. Instead, the college has installed
Plexiglas and required masks to return students to February 2020, only with
these modifications. The Plexiglas Promise wasn’t really a plan as much as an
IOU for the status quo. And this approach does a disservice to our students,
particularly our most vulnerable populations.
Rather than a return to the past, we must work intentionally and strategically --
with a focus on the future and an equity lens -- to serve students whose needs
and expectations have changed. This approach is a tall order in the best of
times, but the colleges that focus on positioning and transforming their
institutions will fare better in both the short and long terms through the
following practices:
 Transparency should be the focus in all communication and
actions. My first formal communication to Clark State in early March stated,
“At times my communication may be incomplete and at other times I will fail
in my communication. Please be patient and flexible during these times.”
With every email, video, push notification, town hall meeting and open-door
session for students and employees, the Board of Trustees and I have
demonstrated repeatedly to the college that we are listening and working
with the best possible information, in good faith.
2. Trauma-informed approaches should be scaled to all aspects of
the student experience. Students, employees and community members
alike are experiencing a collective trauma. Are the ways that we have
traditionally served our populations exacerbating this trauma? Colleges
should inventory every student-facing operation and ask, “Is this helping
students complete their goal or hindering them?” Clark State is embarking
on an ambitious project to use the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) concept of trauma and trauma-
informed approach framework to overhaul the way we work with students,
on both the learning and services sides of our operation.
 Test new ideas. Years ago, I banished the phrase “because we have
always done it that way” and encouraged our faculty and staff to challenge
“the way we have always done it.” Community colleges in particular have
built their organizations on the servant leadership of student success. The
flexibility and entrepreneurial spirit that we pride ourselves on as we
prepare the workforce should translate into unique ways to serve students.
 A good first step is to gather the data from the student allocation distribution
for the federal CARES Act and ask, “Have the needs that students
demonstrated from CARES informed current and future practice and
services?” Clark State staff made some surprising insights: we assumed
most students would request monies for technology, as we thought we
were delivering robust wraparound services. It turns out that the majority of
our distribution -- nearly 90 percent -- was for the needs we thought we
were meeting, such as food, housing, transportation and childcare. We
must double down on serving students even more comprehensively in
these areas, and have increased collaborations with nonprofits and Ohio
Jobs and Family Services during this time.
 Transform the student experience. Now is the perfect time to
strengthen and make seamless transfer pathways to universities.
Competency-based education must come to scale during this time, and
quickly, along with a commitment on the part of every higher education
institution to resource prior learning assessments so that students can push
deeper into the curriculum and achieve a credential or degree more quickly.
It is also time to address higher education’s conception of time, be it the credit
hour, semester or time to (two- and four-year) degree. During my 28 years in
higher education, I have questioned the coin of our realm: the credit hour. Will
a conversation about revisiting the credit hour finally take place? With every
college changing, adjusting and modifying their academic calendars, will we
substantially rethink the 16-, 12-, 10-, or eight-week semester? Will we offer
our classes such that the two- and four-year degree can be compressed?
We have been hearing about disruption in higher education for years, but
during COVID times, our response cannot be “in one year, everything will be
back to the way it was.” Everything will never be back to the way it was. Our
students, faculty, staff, boards, communities and employers have all changed
fundamentally in the past seven months, and more changes are in store for
us. Perhaps the famous line from L. P. Hartley has never been more relevant
to our work in higher education: “The past is a foreign country; they do things
differently there.”
Jo Alice Blondin is president of Clark State Community College.

A Fair Shot at Economic Success and Stability

By Amy Ellen Duke-Benfield
The disproportionate impact that the pandemic has had on people of color and
low-income families is a reminder that we urgently need to advance policies to
build an economic recovery that is inclusive and equitable. A recovery where
success isn’t judged by how much the stock market surges, but is instead
determined by how much we invest in those who have been most impacted by
this recession and how well we address the structural inequities within our
education and workforce policies so that everyone has a fair shot at achieving
economic success and stability.
Through the experiences of Charles, Felicia and Heather-Alysia we see the
challenges low-income students of color face as they pursue their college
dreams. Even before the pandemic, they were swimming upstream in a
postsecondary system that has failed to respond to the distinct needs of older
students, who are often balancing work, school and family. This
unresponsiveness has ramifications. At least one in five students is parenting
while pursuing postsecondary education, and degree attainment among
student parents is low.
A recent HOPE Center survey found that 68 percent of parenting students
were housing insecure in the previous year and 17 percent of parenting
students were homeless in 2019. So Charles’s experience of living in his car
is, unfortunately, not unique.
In their stories we see students who are trying to move up in the labor market
to achieve more economic stability. None of them would be surprised to learn
that, during the pandemic, workers with a high school degree or less have
been displaced at nearly three times the rate as those with a bachelor’s
degree. It’s why they continue to pursue certificates and degrees in demand in
the labor market despite the challenges laid before them, whether it be
homelessness, student debt or familial responsibilities.
Too often, lower-income working students start postsecondary education with
great academic aspirations and skills from both work and life experience, but
few financial resources. Current postsecondary policies fall short of
addressing students’ multiple roles as parents, workers and students.
Moreover, when existing policies do not place equity front and center, they fail
to target the systemic barriers holding back students of color. What these
students lack is access to essential supports such as high-quality advising,
flexible financial aid, childcare subsidies and career pathways that allow them
to stack quality credentials leading to better-paying jobs while on their way to
a degree.
Most state financial aid programs do not meet the needs of these students,
whether because of their age, circumstances or attendance patterns. States
should prioritize low-income students and students of color in a conscious
manner by designing debt-free college and free college proposals to focus on
these students. Short of that, financial aid policies should be more flexible --
supporting part-time attendance and those who have to stop out and providing
aid to those who delay college entry after high school. This will benefit
students of color, part-time students, older and returning students, student
parents, and immigrants.
Low-income students need supports beyond financial aid, including means-
tested public benefits programs like subsidized childcare, food assistance,
housing and health insurance. Yet many income-support policies have work
requirements or restrictions on education and training that limit the combining
of resources to cover tuition and fees, childcare, adequate food and stable
housing. Both federal and state public benefits policies need to be realigned to
support low-income students’ postsecondary attendance and completion, so
all have more financial resources that offset the need for student loans, and
so Charles has stable housing and Heather-Alysia has better support while
balancing her and her son’s remote schooling.
Employment is front of mind for all three students. All want better jobs and are
building valuable skills along their educational pathways. Policies for an
inclusive economic recovery arising from the pandemic must incorporate the
needs of businesses so that investments in education and training are tied to
labor market demand and leverage best practices, like work-based learning,
to train workers for skilled positions.
In Felicia’s story we see the powerful role large employers can play in
supporting students’ postsecondary aspirations. The tuition and nontuition
supports, like advising, provided by Amazon and Merit America helped her
pay for her IT certificate and hone her career goals to ensure they were
aligned with labor market demands so she could land a good job as a
software support specialist.
The majority of small and medium-size businesses usually do not have the
same resources to invest in employees, so it would be wise for future stimulus
legislation to include support for college-employer partnerships that better
align education and training offerings to support employment demand and
offer the supports students need. We also need institutions and states to align
course offerings and accelerate the development of articulation agreements
that allow all three students to easily stack their credentials to degrees, even if
they change institutions.
Amy Ellen Duke-Benfield is a senior fellow at the National Skills Coalition.

The Road to the American Dream: Finding Purpose in the Detours

By Joshua Christie
“I waited for this moment my whole life,” my dad said quietly while standing in
the doorway of the kitchen. He paused for a moment, looked me in the eye
and then shook his head.
My twin brother, Jonathan, and I would be first in our family to graduate from
college. We were finally going to walk across the stage and receive our
diplomas in business management and finance from Rutgers University,
Newark -- something my parents had dreamed of since we were little kids.
After all, that’s why my parents immigrated here. Originally from Trinidad and
Jamaica, they moved to Newark, N.J., in 1991 and 1994 with little but their
hopes, dreams and aspirations. Though from different countries, they had so
much in common, like many other immigrants.
My parents immigrated here to break the cycle of poverty that ran in their
families. They believed they would have more opportunity and hoped to one
day achieve the American dream. That meant someday being homeowners. It
meant a better life for themselves and the children they hoped to have one
day.
For nearly three decades, they have sacrificed so much to make progress
towards these dreams. They each worked two jobs to make ends meet. They
sacrificed hours upon hours to provide for my brother, sister and me. And last
month, one of their dreams -- 21 years in the making -- almost came true.
“I've had visions, I've had dreams
I've even held them in my hand
But I never knew they would slip right through
Like they were only grains of sand.”
During these uncertain times, I’ve been reminded of these song lyrics -- they
encapsulate our present situation. The visions, the dreams, the aspirations
and even the goals I had for my last semester were at my fingertips, but who
would’ve thought a pandemic would cause them to slip away so quickly?
In March, we moved to online learning because of the pandemic. I missed the
dorming experience, meeting new people and spending my last semester with
friends.
I also was bummed I didn’t get to study abroad like I had planned. The world
is a big place, full of endless opportunities. I was looking forward to growing
as an individual by experiencing a new culture. As a photographer, I was
excited to learn more about myself creatively and explore new ideas.
Most importantly, I envisioned having a job lined up after college. I didn’t ever
think that I’d graduate into a recession. But I know I’m not alone. So many
other graduates also are trying to find jobs during a challenging economy.
Despite certain dreams and visions not playing out as I’d imagined, I’m not
losing hope. Hope is the kindling for future dreams and visions, and I keep
telling myself that “this too shall pass.” The demand for jobs is simply higher
than those available right now. Plus, I recognize that I am lucky. I have my
own photography business (Purpose Portraits LLC//Joshua Christie
Photography) that I can focus on while I seek a full-time creative role in media.
I learned in college -- through a program called Braven -- the importance of
combining my passions and my skills to find my future career. It’s a life goal of
mine to turn my photography side hustle into a full-time endeavor. I’ve realized
that I have what it takes; I just need to work hard to make it a reality. In the
meanwhile, I’ll continue to refine my skills as I look for job opportunities. I’m
currently teaching myself to edit old photo shoots differently.
There’s the saying that when life throws you lemons, you should make
lemonade. I would take it a step further. Use all the lemons, including the skin.
Make a pie. Or in this case, use this opportunity to better yourself. Don’t let
this chapter be one you skip over. Let it be one you look back on fondly,
reminiscing of how much you overcame and grew as a person.
We all have goals we’re working toward, and this is just a speed bump in the
road. For me, it’s carrying the family torch -- the one passed on to me from my
parents so their hard work and efforts are not in vain. One day I will grow my
business and buy that house my parents have dreamed of for decades.
Joshua Christie is a recent graduate of Rutgers University, Newark.

Reader Comments:
 Instead of focusing on them picking a major then asking "what can I do
with this major," have students identify their gifts, skills and knowledge to
serve others, asking, "what majors fit best with how I want to serve others?"
Help students create educational, experiential, employable and
entrepreneurial endeavors based on a specific problem they can solve for
others. Provide opportunities for students to develop an entrepreneurial
spirit, where they can learn how to create opportunities, instead of just
waiting for something (like a job) to come along. Be proactive vs. reactive
when it comes to their educational goals. -- William Johnson
 Colleges and universities have not truly appreciated that their collective
student populations are not the 'traditional' students of the past. Many
institutions with a high percentage of undergraduates still message to the
students like all are 17 to 18 years old and live at home. Truly
understanding their populations will help them better serve the students
who are enrolled. For example, this is especially true for nontraditional
students who make up a growing percentage of undergraduates across the
country. Their needs (financial and support services related) are different in
many cases from the student who is attending college straight from high
school. The same is true for the first-gen students who may or not be home
and food insecure. Colleges need to do better to communicate and support
all students. -- Patricia Soares
 It was interesting to hear the sparse level of support the student panelist
experienced at their respective universities. I believe Rocque stated that no
one in financial services or other areas was helpful to him in his time of
need, and the other panelist made similar comments. The university culture
has to be supportive on all levels to assist enrolled students in time of need.
It is everyone's responsibility to assist a student at their university, so it hurt
me as a student affairs professional to hear the lack of support these
students received to be successful from university faculty and staff
 members. We have to do a better job of helping not one but all students in
their academic journey. -- James Yizar
 Having academic advisers/mentors who check in on students
periodically is critical! This can be done in person/virtually/over text or
phone. CBOs that have this as a consistent practice see stronger results in
their students. Higher ed needs to do the same if they want to do right by
their first-gen, students of color, low-income and nontraditional students. If
the ultimate goal is to have students graduate to go on and contribute in
their chosen field of study, colleges and universities have to devote people
time to students. -- Vicky Rivera
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